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AI is making me dumb

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Re: AI is making me dumb

#21

Post by blain »

voncheese wrote: post #5

Relatable! Or at least making me feel dumb (at times). Things that help me feel smarter are * actually writing more on my own - created a personal blog just to get myself to write more * upleveling my thinking - think more about problems and framing * leverage my experience - guide (or sometimes force) the AI assistant to leverage my experience to avoid problems * learning new things - rather than let AI just replace…

> learning new things

I wonder lately, doesn't that all new knowledge push out the old knowledge? As in new things replace old things we know. I don't know any studies on this but do we have infinite capacity for knowledge?

What about retaining it? I catch myself asking AI wondering about random things that pop into my head, reading it, maybe using that knowledge once and later no longer remembering what it was. Maybe if you use that knowledge in practice from the get go but projects get so complicated sometimes it seems like there is not enough space in my brain for things AI is learning me.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#22

Post by comrade1234 »

For my current project I'm coding every day in Java, ruby, and JavaScript. I waste a lot of tokens doing what used to be simple google searches for language differences since I mix up things like the null-safe operator ruby vs jscript or what is the continue/break statement in ruby vs java. I think Claude is probably very disappointed in me that the most complicated thing I use it for is refactoring old Java loops to use more modern streams which can be unwritable for a human off the top of your head.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#23

Post by hparadiz »

steezeburger wrote: post #18
Rooster61 wrote: post #11

I can't relate that much to this. Every time I use AI to write code, I'm constantly fighting a feeling on the back of my neck that I need to look over everything it has done and supplement/alter it with my own code. That ick feeling counteracts the dopamine hit of having a working app after a few minutes of vibe coding, and I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon. That said, I have experience. I could absolu…

Experience is so so valuable right now. We can guide these agents super well, but I do fear for the juniors as you said. I would like to think I'd use the agents to dive deeper and learn faster. It was pretty rough piecing together solutions from Stack Overflow, various irc channels, Reddit, etc. But also, I cheated on my homework in college and didn't really review the answers, so not sure. Though I pursued programm…

Metrics, profilers, architecture! Use AI to get back to basics! Wanna prove a technique is better? Use AI to make a benchmark! Learn by experimentation! That is my advice to juniors. At the end of the day AI is writing code and there may be 10 different ways to run something. Only one is the fastest in any given use case.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#24

Post by happytoexplain »

pton_xd wrote: post #6

We'll just move to a higher level of abstraction; thinking will be like efficiently coding in assembly, no longer necessary in today's world.

People say this constantly, but it's a qualitatively different jump from all previous abstraction layers. Previously, the part of your brain you had to use, and the way you had to think, changed from old layer X to new layer Y, but they were still very similar qualitatively. A person who was good at and enjoyed layer X either naturally was good at and enjoyed layer Y, or they could achieve both of those things after a little time. But with LLMs, the jump is much more lateral.

To do the thing I hate and use an analogy: It's not like asking a furniture maker to start using power tools; it's like asking a furniture maker to start telling a robot to make the furniture, in English. Yes, the people who were already good at furniture-making will have an advantage in how to direct the robot - but the salient point is that it's a recipe for misery for many people.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#28

Post by Accacin »

I have a nice balance of using AI at work as a C#/TS developer which allows me to get stuff done and working on personal projects at home using AI purely for ideas when I'm stuck or not able to figure something out myself.

I personally think it can be a great tool for learning but it's so easy to fall into the trap of getting AI to do everything for you.

I've also used it for personal projects like a Chip8 emulator I wrote in C where I'd managed to run a few basic games and ran out of steam. Used AI to help me implement the rest.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#29

Post by happytoexplain »

marknutter wrote: post #17

Ai has been the best learning tool I have every used and it's not even close. I've learned more in the past year than I have in the past 5.

There are two kinds of learning: Reading and doing (and you need both). AI has been great for the reading half of learning, but has harmed the doing half of learning due to efficiency demands. We can still "do" in private, but no longer in our day-to-day.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#30

Post by chowells »

hparadiz wrote: post #23
steezeburger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experience is so so valuable right now. We can guide these agents super well, but I do fear for the juniors as you said. I would like to think I'd use the agents to dive deeper and learn faster. It was pretty rough piecing together solutions from Stack Overflow, various irc channels, Reddit, etc. But also, I cheated on my homework in college and didn't really review the answers, so not sure. Though I pursued programm…

Metrics, profilers, architecture! Use AI to get back to basics! Wanna prove a technique is better? Use AI to make a benchmark! Learn by experimentation! That is my advice to juniors. At the end of the day AI is writing code and there may be 10 different ways to run something. Only one is the fastest in any given use case.

Fastest is usually the wrong metric. But you'd need experience to know that, I suppose...
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